Adventure Through The Mirror

‘Alice’ is a contemporary fantasy movie based on the books Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. This happens generations after the famous Alice has already come and gone from their world. It was shown as a mini-series on SyFy.

Alice Hamilton (Caterina Scorsone) is still grieving the disappearance of her father some years ago. Today she is a martial arts instructor. One of her students, Jack (Philip Winchester), is her boyfriend and she has finally invited him to her house to meet her mother Carol (Teryl Rothery). He gives her an engagement ring in a puzzle box. What she doesn’t know is that it’s the Ring of Wonderland, the only thing that can activate the Looking Glass, or mirror, that acts as a portal between our two worlds.

Through a series of events, Alice accidentally falls through the looking glass and into another world. A world where the Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates) rules. She lives in a house of cards with her husband the King of Hearts (Colm Meaney) and her son. Her world runs on essences drawn from oysters and she uses this to keep her power. Not everyone is happy with how the kingdom is being run. There is a faction of people who want to overthrow the queen and their world of the addictive essences.

There are many mysteries to uncover. Who is Jack really? How did he come to have the Ring of Wonderland? Can she really trust him? Where has he gone? Who in wonderland can she trust? Why does she have a strange tattoo on her arm? How can she return to her world?

There are many character names that you might recognize from the book. Some of them are code names and so they aren’t really animals. There is Dodo (Tim Curry), Caterpillar (Harry Dean Stanton), Walrus (Dave Ward), Carpenter (Timothy Webber), the White Knight (Matt Frewer), White Rabbit (Alan Gray), the Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts) and the Doctors Dee and Dum (both played by Eugene Lipinski).

One of my favorite characters is Hatter. He does a splendid job making you wonder which side he’s really on: the Queen’s, the rebels, or his own side. This is a wonderful movie with many twists and surprises that will keep your mind filled with questions. It is somewhat long at a little over three hours, but it’s well worth it.